So how do artists get paid? We simply must create a patron culture. If you enjoy the work of an artist, tip what you can afford. And if this means you pay $10,000 for a CD because you really want an artist to succeed, it should be EASY to make the $9,980 into a charitable contribution.

Yes, this is technological pass the hat, but I’ll wager the artists come out ahead. After all, all the artists that are making a living in the religion biz are already using this form of economics.

Of course, to make this work, there needs to be some cultural cops who hector the free-loaders like they do for fund-raising at PBS.

There was little enough money from the record companies and it helped keep the musicians off the dole.

Why am I not surprised that when the U.S. finally gets around to radio royalties it’s only the record companies that see the money?

We need to add rolling back spurious “intellectual property claims” to the list of Democratic priorities. These are abusive monopolies that masquerade as copyright and patent law while allowing the least creative portions of our society–the coprorations–to profit at the expense of the creative intellects that the laws were supposed to protect.

Congress should repeal the Millenium Copyright Act. It should legislate judicial creations like corporate copyright and work-for-hire doctrine out of existence. Only creative individuals should be able to hold a copyright or a patent. Congress should make invalidation of copyrights and patents the automatic punishment for abusing the limited monopolies that the law grants. Abuses would include unreasonably high pricing, artificially limited distribution, and any and all attempts to limit fair use by side agreements, such as licenses. Congress should reduce the length of time that both patents and copyrights run. For copyright, it should be no more than 20 years (yes, I am a professional writer if you were wondering). Congress should explicitly exclude performances and athletic events form copyright, since neither arises to the level of substantive originality required by copyright. Finally, if we really want to protect creative activity as the Constitution intended, we should legally limit transfers of rights, so that the songwriter never loses his rights to the record company. Publishers should only have the rights for as long as they are paying royalties, and royalties should be renegotiated periodically at fair intervals.

I still have four of the old Monkees albums on vinyl. I’m afraid my plastic model Monkeemobile, however, is lost to the ages.

James Burke noted in his Day the Universe Changed series that bits of the past live on when deemed acceptable even under changed circumstances — such things, in this day and age of ever more rapid change, as royalties, e.g.

Fascinating post. I take it this is JH’s area of expertise.